Very coke, Chinese your own coke.
People who still remember this advertisement are not young.
In 1998, Wahaha raised the menacing banner of national industry and launched the popular Very Coke.
At that time, many people joked:
Very cola, very ridiculous. Very coke, must die.
But this new product, which is called "China Coke", sold more than 2 billion yuan a year at its peak, and once stood on three feet with Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
But it was still only very popular for a while, and it didn't take many years for the very cola to gradually fade out of the beverage market.
Now, Wahaha rushed up again with a brand new Very Coke.
Image from: Wahaha Creative Flagship Store
Except for the name or very cola, the rest has changed.
Last week, Very Coke launched a series of new products, in order to be close to the young consumers who are now paying attention to health, its first step is to position itself as "sugar-free".
The drink is divided into 4 flavors: ginseng, oil citrus, plum, and original.
The first ginseng taste looks very healthy, suitable for workers who stay up late to burn their brains, the second oil citrus flavor, presumably fits the oil citrus tea that set off a boom a while ago, and the third plum flavor sounds a bit of Chinese New Year's taste.
It seems to be a feeling of a fusion of old and new.
On September 27th, Wahaha also tweeted on Weibo - "What should be the taste of Chinese cola", indicating that what to drink is decided by everyone, which includes 7 flavors such as ginseng, hawthorn, passion fruit, plum, ginger juice, coriander, and oil orange.
Wahaha also launched the top three ginseng, oil citrus, and plum as scheduled, presumably the latter four flavors are also likely to be seen in the future.
On the packaging of the new product, it also fits the popular national tide style, and the bottle body has various national style patterns.
In the past, very cola was a festive Chinese red, chinese red is quite festive, but it is also jokingly called like Coca-Cola's "pirated".
Now, its bottle body will still have some red elements, but the new color has changed to gold - this color, I am afraid, not only Chinese like, the world likes.
Image from: Wahaha Weibo
In fact, all along, very cola has not really "disappeared", but gradually faded out of the consumer's vision, and first-tier cities even have no figure at all.
The previous month, very cola changed a national style packaging "return", but in the Taobao Tmall store sales are not optimistic, just one or two people to pay. The unofficial store next door features "Seeking Childhood Memories", which sells more than the new version.
This time, the launch of the sugar-free series of very cola, as well as the popular health and popular tastes of young people, really have a little "new resurrection" feeling, and there is also a trend of returning to the mainstream cola market.
In terms of price, the original price of 4 bottles of 550ml was 15 yuan, and now the initial price is 8.8 yuan, and the original price is not much different from similar products of Pepsi And Coca-Cola.
Although the number of new products paid in the Taobao Tmall store is now several thousand, the enthusiasm is obviously much higher, but it is still far from "hot".
The return of "very coke", can it be fired again?
In this matter, we must first go back to the years when it was hot, and look at those popular "Chinese Cokes".
Speaking of childhood Coke, in addition to very Coke, you may remember a lot of brands.
Some look like copycat versions of Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
For example, Happy Coke, Happy Coke, and Everything Cola, which is more coke than Pepsi, every sad human being sees it and wants to drink and relieve a thousand sorrows.
Coca-Cola has not escaped the "cottage robbery", not only Coca-Cola in the store, but also Coca-Cola, the name sounds very confusing - what is this doing?
The early manufacturers also foresaw the trend of young people's black talk in advance, and launched a chrysanthemum-flavored thirsty cola.
Of course, many Chinese brands really want to do coke business.
Coca-Cola was actually introduced to the Chinese market as early as 1917, and was popular in a small and medium-sized range of Shanghai gentlemen and celebrities, with a kind of "foreign aristocratic drink" posture. But then the founding of New China, which represented the luxury of capitalism, Coca-Cola, was boycotted by the government and soon fell into a period of silence.
Domestic Coke began to catch fire in different parts of the river.
Before the launch of the very cola, the most famous was the Qingdao Laoshan Coke, which was born in 1953.
This is also the first carbonated beverage independently developed in New China, and its ingredients are completely original, made of multi-flavored Chinese herbs such as cloves, galangal, baizhi, jujube, and sand kernel. Drink it now, and you probably don't even think it's Coke.
Until the 1990s, Laoshan Coke ranked first among the "Top Eight Cokes in China" and once accounted for 75% of the Chinese Coke market.
At this time in Chongqing, China, another cola that swept the country was born - Tianfu Coke in 1980.
This cola is jointly developed by Chongqing Beverage Factory and Sichuan Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, with ingredients such as white peony, angelica, ground yellow, etc., and is also a "healing drink" of the old era.
Most of the "Chinese Coke" has a bit of "drug ingredients", which is why many "Chinese Cokes" in childhood are called "delicious versions of Banlan Root" by children.
At the same time as the very Coke, there was also a person named Fenhuang Coke.
Launched in the late 1990s, this Coke is also an authentic Chinese-style drink - it is full of righteousness, full of the momentum of flying yellow Tengda, and is dedicated to promoting China's "dragon culture", and has invited Jackie Chan as the brand spokesperson.
The three giants of domestic beverages were very cola, Jianlibao, and Fenhuang Coke at that time.
The explosion of very cola is also attributed to the fact that a completely different route was taken at that time: from the countryside to the city.
It was quickly welcomed by people in second- and third-tier cities with its low price, no preservatives added, and its festive style, with a market share of 16%-17% at the end of 2006, second only to Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.
This is a lively history of domestic cola "a hundred schools of thought".
"China Coke" is far more than the above mentioned, there is also the Happy Coke launched by Shanghai Zhengguanghe Soda Factory in the 1970s, the Shaolin Coke launched by Lianjiang Health Beverage Factory in Guangdong Province, and the "Changping Coke" from Beijing...
But since the 90s, foreign Coke brands have swept China, and everything has begun to change.
At that time, the Chinese market gradually departed from the traditional conservative, the international promotion of investment promotion, foreign Coke brands began to build factories in China, and spent a lot of effort in marketing, as well as a large amount of money for cooperation and acquisition, at the same time, also used the advantages of shareholders to hunt and snow sodas around the world, buy out sales channels to promote their own drinks.
All these have caused a great impact on the "Chinese Coke".
PepsiCo's first factory in China
Tianfu Cola was gradually marginalized in 1994 after cooperating with Pepsi Cola; Laoshan Coke later plummeted under the coca-Cola offensive, then was acquired by the Coca-Cola Company and discontinued in 1997.
Of course, exiting the market has its own reasons.
Fenhuang Coke spent a lot of money on advertising at that time, and spent 150 million yuan in 1998, which was not as high as the net profit of Coke, and it was more and more unable to maintain production; other brands of "Chinese Coke" were more or less because of the lack of taste, marketing and strategic choices, which were cannibalized by the two major foreign beverages and gradually withdrew from the historical stage.
Coca-Cola poster during the Republic of China
The reasons for the collapse of very cola are very complicated, when it fought against the two major coke giants and exported to the United States, which was quite popular with "crushing foreign coke".
But the good times are not long, some people say that it is satisfied with the status quo, because the old base of the national goods banner, can not eat for a while; some people say that it is no longer innovative, has been rooted in the countryside, not with the young trend with the times; some people say that it does not make much effort in marketing publicity, Coca-Cola and Pepsi At this time, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have fully occupied the minds of consumers...
Now when people think of Coke, there are only two kinds: Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Chinese youth drink Coke in 1981; Time magazine in 1984
In fact, several "Chinese Cokes" have returned since then.
In 2004, Qingdao Laoshan Mineral Water Company took back the Laoshan Coke brand and produced the old taste again; in 2016, Tianfu Coke took back the formula from Pepsi Cola and reclaimed the trademark, returning to the market again.
However, the cola market is now too stable.
When people place orders for these old Cokes, the most common reason is often to relive the taste of childhood, to relive the taste of hometown, and we don't need a bottle of drink to prove that we are not strong.
In people's hearts, very coke has gradually become a "low-grade version of coke", and even many young people have never heard of very coke.
The weaknesses of the "Chinese Coke" mentioned earlier are also the strengths of Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
In 2004, PepsiCo invited many celebrities to endorse them
Well-funded, marketing, constantly changing, and communicating with young consumers, they focus on Coke's own cultural image — young, vibrant, stylish, and they're very good at using Coke culture to build their brands and use that value to guide consumption.
Cola, a carbonated soft drink flavored with vanilla, cinnamon, citrus oil, etc. Although Coca-Cola has always mysteriously painted their recipes, it is not difficult to concoct a carbonated drink with a similar taste.
Brand effect is their core competitiveness, so that they take root in people's hearts more and more deeply.
Moreover, it now seems that the promotion of very Coke is not as good as Pepsi And Coca-Cola, and more importantly, these two giants have an unshakable force in the channels, supply chains and operations of the domestic carbonic acid market.
Even if you look at the world, among the nearly 300 Coke brands, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are still the bosses in Coke.
To pry the territory of these two cola giants in the Coke market, the road is long and long.
But that doesn't mean that Coca-Cola and Pepsi don't have a crisis, and their competitors aren't actually each other, but all drinks.
The "0 sugar 0 fat 0 calorie" beverage launched by Yuanqi Forest has once again set off a new beverage trend in domestic soda, and behind its popularity, it is still grasping the psychological trend of contemporary young people who are keen on healthy fashion consumption.
The awakening of people's health awareness has caused a great impact on the sales of "Fat House Happy Water", because carbonated drinks in people's minds are equal to unhealthy.
In order to consolidate their position in the industry, the two major beverage giants have not only launched various sugar-free versions of Coke, but also no longer rely solely on soda to maintain the market, but are moving towards "all-category" beverage companies. Coca-Cola's biggest recent acquisition was the $5.6 billion acquisition of the sports drink bodyarmor.
In addition to "resurrection" very cola, Wahaha has also been doing a lot of youthful attempts, such as ad calcium milk IP, robots, opening milk tea shops and so on.
Not only Coke, coffee, wine, tea drinks, juice drinks, all in China's new consumer market heat wave after wave of uneven wave after wave, The Arctic Ocean, Bingfeng, Emei Snow, Wuhan Second Factory and other old sodas are also returning in a new way, creating explosive products, joint names, opening sub-brands.
New opportunities are always there, and how to win the hearts of a new generation of young consumers is the secret of all brands to maintain their youth forever.
When old brands try to revive and new brands are popular, one noteworthy point is that -
Coca-Cola and Pepsi never seem to mention youthfulness because they are always tied to young people.